Promises At Story's End
by StillWaters1
Summary: There were certain people who were always found in the middle of heart-breaking stories: Lestrade was one of them. As it turned out, John Watson was another.


**Title:** Promises At Story's End

**Author:** Still Waters

**Fandom:** Sherlock (BBC)

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Sherlock. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

**Summary: **There were certain people who were always found in the middle of heart-breaking stories: Lestrade was one of them. As it turned out, John Watson was another.

**Written:** 7/23/13 – 7/29/13

**Notes:** This story is set early in season one's timeline and acts as both character study/background for Lestrade and a look at how Lestrade and John may have gone from being acquaintances with Sherlock as a common denominator to close friends on their own. Writing this story was…rough. It was equal parts joyful, cathartic, and painful. I'm glad Lestrade took up the telling of it and I'm also glad to let it go. Dialogue quoted from "Sherlock" or "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" does not belong to me. I truly hope that I did credit not only to the characters, but also to those who have been part of these stories in their own lives. Thank you for reading and for your continued support. I cherish every response.

* * *

There were certain people who were always found in the middle of heart-breaking stories: not because they _wanted_ to be there, but because they were _drawn_ there; as if some invisible hand regularly placed them on the edges of those unfolding tales until an intuitive ability, an inexplicably innate understanding of how to best bring comfort, pulled them into the very heart of the writing.

Lestrade had always been one of those people.

Because before years of police work and homicide investigations, before drugs-addled consulting detectives and insane consulting criminals, there were David and Mary.

David Morgan was one of Lestrade's best mates during police training: an Irish Catholic with dark eyes and darker hair where it wasn't already graying in a few wisps of unruly fringe, intensely focused on his studies with a quietly firm faith and a dark, dry sarcasm punctuated by bursts of shockingly filthy humor. His mother, Mary, widowed by a military training accident when David was an infant, had raised him on her own and one conversation with her was all it took to see where David's humor came from.

Lestrade would never forget that first meeting.

"_Greg, welcome! Come in, come in!" Mary ushered Lestrade into the small flat._

"_Thank you, Mrs. Morgan," Lestrade dipped his head politely and held out a hand. "It's really great to meet you. David talks about you all the time."_

"_Does he now?" she smiled slyly, eyes sliding toward the kitchen doorway._

"'_Course I do, mum," David's voice came over the sound of a filling kettle. "Not as much as you talk about __me__, of course, but…."_

"_I'm your mother, dear, that's the way it should be," she insisted, eyes moving back to Lestrade. "Please, call me Mary," she said, taking his hand and shaking it firmly before rolling her eyes, as if to some comment only she could hear. "Yes, __Mary__. My parents weren't a very imaginative lot, were they? When in doubt, name an Irish girl for the Virgin Mother. Of course, I've got David, so obviously I'm not…." She waved toward the kitchen._

_Lestrade blushed and burst out laughing as David's fondly indignant yelp rose above a sudden clatter of dishes._

"_Oi, mum!" David shouted before poking his head around the doorway to address Lestrade. "See what I mean? Aren't you glad I warned you?" he asked, eyes sparkling in a mirror image of his mother's uninhibited humor._

"_Hush, you," Mary pretended to dismiss him as she took Lestrade's coat._

"_And yet, for all that, she still gave me a Biblical name," David sighed._

"_I named you for a great king, a slayer of giants," Mary pointed out._

"_Yeah, no pressure there, mum," David rolled his eyes._

"_I don't know, mate; some of these exams have been Goliaths and you've slayed every one," Lestrade offered._

"_See?" Mary brightened. "Greg understands," she said, leading the way into the kitchen._

_Lestrade followed behind until a plaque to the right of the kitchen doorway caught his attention, stopping him in his tracks. It was the Black Knight from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" with the caption, "none shall pass."_

_Mary followed his gaze. "What?" she shrugged, eyes dancing. "I'm an Irish Catholic with one child – my eleven brothers and sisters already know I'm a bit mad. Why hide it?"_

Lestrade had loved Mary from that moment on, taking her as a second mother as readily as she adopted him as another son. The rigors of training classes and probationary periods were broken by bright spots of shared meals, comedy viewings, and easy laughter, the three of them communicating in their own private code of favorite quotes and jokes.

On the eve of their first day off of probation, Lestrade and David's original group got together to celebrate with family and friends. After dinner, David asked one of their mates to take a photo of the three of them together. Mary slipped into the waiting space between David and Lestrade and tucked an arm around each of them, tears in her eyes.

"Hail, King David," Lestrade grinned at his friend.

Mary stifled a gasp, eyes threatening to spill over.

David leaned close and whispered into her ear, Lestrade just catching a bit from Monty Python's peasant scene: "You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!"

Mary burst into laughter, equal parts raw and joyful. She swiped at her eyes, put her arms back around her beloved boys, and smiled for the camera.

When she stepped away to thank the photographer, Lestrade turned to David with a piercing look. "What was _that_ about?" he asked, every bit of his intuition screaming a warning.

"I've got cancer," David said. "Found out this morning."

Lestrade swallowed roughly, closing his eyes for a split-second before letting his gut drive his next words. "Another Goliath, eh?"

David chuckled. "She just _had_ to name me David," he sighed, tone shifting from long-suffering sarcasm to soft fondness as he glanced across the room. "Bloody woman."

Six months later, David was dead.

He was twenty-one.

David's funeral wasn't Lestrade's first, nor in the twenty-plus years of police work ahead of him, would it be his last. But it was the first time he stood next to a sobbing woman as much a mother to him as his own flesh and blood, the priest's words a low, foreign drone against the echo of a promise made to a dying man in the hour before unconsciousness finally took hold.

"_I know I don't really need to ask this but…..you'll look out for mum, right Greg? You know, until we see each other again?"_

_Even then, there had been no "my"; the "__our__ mum" as firmly unspoken as it always had been._

"_Of course, mate." Lestrade wasn't sure that he believed in David's heaven, yet the next words came without thought. "'Til you're ready to take over."_

Lestrade could hardly call it a vow; the next several years of keeping close to Mary were as natural as breathing. They shared stories of Lestrade's work and Mary's corruption of her nieces and nephews at regular dinners and café meetings, went to the cinema when a good comedy was playing, and held regular marathons of Monty Python's complete works. Twice a year, on the anniversaries of David's birth and death, Lestrade would accompany Mary to that same church and sit silently in one of the faithfully polished pews, studying the towering statues of saints and angels while Mary lit a candle and prayed for the son she knew she'd see again.

It was at one of those candle lightings, on the thirteenth anniversary of David's death, that Lestrade recognized the look in Mary's eyes; the same one wiped away by laughter and sheer force of will seconds before the photograph that still sat proudly on Lestrade's bedside table.

He forced himself to wait until they were at the church doors on the way out, Mary dipping her fingertips into the holy water and anointing herself with the sign of the cross. "What is it?" he asked. The question was weary, wary, and already grieving; the feeling of impending loss all too familiar.

"Alzheimer's. Got the diagnosis this morning."

She was only fifty-seven.

Lestrade took a careful breath around the surging grief, the flash of rage at the universe's indiscriminate cruelty, and went back to that moment with David thirteen years earlier. "Another Goliath," he said; the words both weariness and encouragement – 'we've done this before, we can do it again.'

"I'm not David, dear," Mary said, and Lestrade's heart sank at the defeated edge to that statement, the sound of her so impossibly tired and sad. "I'm Mary, though blessed with two sons," she smiled fondly at him. "I've watched one son die and will see him resurrected in heaven. And now, my mind'll go back to being as virgin as my namesake. Tabula rasa and all that. It's fitting, don't you think? Life always finds a way to be funny."

Lestrade swallowed back angry tears as Mary scrubbed messily at her falling ones. "Mary…"

"Just…." She interrupted him. "….promise me that _you_ won't forget. You know, when…..when I inevitably _do_." She looked back toward the flickering candles, shoulders hitching.

"I won't." Another promise at another story's impending end.

"Good," Mary nodded. Drying her reddened face, she took a deep breath and took Lestrade's arm with a bright, familiar smile. "Now, then, I am in _desperate _need of hot chocolate."

Lestrade knew just the right café.

Twelve years passed.

Lestrade rose to the rank of Detective Inspector, with more responsibility and more frequent exposure to death. He regularly saw not only the worst of what people could do to each other, but also the uncaring cruelty of random chance. He attended many more funerals, for officers and victims alike, and the drawer of the bedside table where that last celebratory photo of him and the Morgans sat came to hold a growing scrapbook of obituaries from a career of fighting sorrow with tightly guarded compassion and the pursuit of whatever justice could be found.

And yet, with everything he had seen, Mary's death was still the worst of them all.

Dementia was an agonizingly slow death; a progressive, insidious loss of everything that made a person who they were. There were times, in the early years of Mary's sudden mood swings and inappropriate behaviors, where Lestrade almost found himself wishing that something like David's straightforward cancer would just take Mary and be done with it. The years were marked by losses: the day Lestrade brought Mary her favorite hot chocolate and she insisted that she had always hated the beverage; the day he found her wandering in the hallway outside her flat, half undressed, crying because she was late for school and she couldn't find her long-dead grandparents to walk with her; the day she was admitted to a care home; the day she forgot David's name, Lestrade's name, her own name. When she was robbed of the ability to walk, feed herself, speak, swallow. The night he came to see her on the way back from lighting David's church candle – a tradition he had maintained for her all those years – and saw nothing but emptiness in the blank, ceiling-fixed stare as he marked her son's birthday.

Lestrade didn't sleep that night, mind simultaneously numb and racing as he lay in bed facing their family photo. It was there, during those long, sleepless hours, that he finally found himself asking, perhaps even praying, for an end to Mary's suffering. Even guiltier still, for that of those who loved her so dearly.

Three days later, Mary's oldest sister phoned Lestrade: Mary had developed aspiration pneumonia and per the family's discussion and Mary's recorded wishes, hospice was initiated, to let her go peacefully. The siblings were starting a vigil, and when work allowed, would Lestrade come sit with them?

Another four days and Lestrade received the call that Mary was close; everyone was there and the nurses were predicting hours. He arrived to the crowded room at midnight, tucked a copy of that beloved photo under her cold hand, and kissed her cheek. It was a credit and an honor to Mary that there were more stories and laughter than tears in the room during those late hours.

At half past four, a bird landed on the windowsill and began to chirp.

It was a swallow.

Lestrade felt himself break into a decades-old smile as an undeniably strong sense of _David_ filled the room. He began to chuckle - a sound more joy and relief than sorrow – as he recalled their last conversation: David was ready to take over again. "About bloody time, mate," he muttered to the bird.

Lestrade's fond chastisement remained between him and David alone, drowned out by the sound of contagious laughter as the rest of the room also noted the significance of the sparrow at the window.

"What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" the youngest brother fired off.

"What do you mean? An African or a European swallow?" another sibling continued the scene.

"What? I don't know that…."

"Ahhhhhhh!" a sister chimed in, imitating the bridge-keeper's fall.

"How do you know so much about swallows?" another brother asked in a spot-on impression of Sir Bedevere.

"Well, you have to know these things when you're a king you know," they all finished in unison, breaking into hysterical laughter.

And so it was with a recitation from her favorite comedy and the laughter of her favorite people that Mary went to see David.

The funeral was well-attended – the perks of having a large family, Mary would say – and held at the same church where Lestrade had spent the last twenty-five years lighting candles in David's memory, both with, and for, Mary.

While processing out with the coffin at the service's end, Lestrade caught a glimpse of a familiar, but quite unexpected, figure at the end of the last pew, right by the door: John Watson, standing at respectful, military attention.

Lestrade was still getting to know John, trying to better understand the army doctor who had suddenly appeared at a crime scene with Sherlock one night with nothing more than Sherlock's insistent "he's with me" to explain his presence, as if John had always been there and always would be. John seemed like a good bloke from what Lestrade had seen so far – smart, loyal, and brave in a quiet, understated way that was quite a contrast to Sherlock's naturally showy personality. He was consistently respectful of Lestrade's authority on cases where Sherlock generally ignored it and possessed a refreshingly dry humor coupled with a way of being in awe of Sherlock while also bettering him as a human being at the same time; something no one had ever really considered _possible_ before.

Once the coffin was safely in the hearse, Lestrade excused himself back to the church, finding John in the same spot, attention fixed on the lines of memorial candles flanking the altar.

"Lestrade," John nodded.

"John," Lestrade nodded back. "What are you doing here?" he asked, cringing inwardly as the words left his mouth. As Donovan and her 'Daily Mail' quip well knew, Lestrade tended to default to blunt honesty when over-drained. And after the last few days, he had nothing left.

John's mouth quirked in a half-smile, conceding the point. "I saw your name with the next of kin in the obituary. Thought I'd come pay my respects." He paused, suddenly seeming unsure. "Hope that's all right."

"No, it's…..I mean, yeah, it's fine. Thank you," Lestrade stammered, brow furrowing ahead of his next words. "So, uh, do you….."

_Do you__ normally__ read through the obituaries every day, then?_

As John's gaze slid back to the candles, the rest of that question died on Lestrade's lips.

Of course.

Of course John read the obituaries daily – as a doctor, looking for former patients, a soldier for fallen comrades. Like a DI who had clipped them out of the papers by hand, case by case, for years, preserving lost lives within the covers of a carefully hidden scrapbook in his flat.

Something flickered in John's eyes, quick as the resilient dance of candle flames to waves of passing mourners, as he brought his attention back to Lestrade.

Their eyes locked.

And, without a word, all was understood.

Lestrade cleared his throat. "You coming to the cemetery?"

John smiled, slow and soft under eyes that both radiated honor at being invited into another's grief and held the heavy remembrance of too much of his own. "Right, then."

John stood at Lestrade's side during the committal prayers, two pillars of disciplined posture in a sea of shaking, black-shrouded shoulders and bare, bowed heads.

When the service was over and the family had gone off to wait by the cars, Lestrade hung back for a much-needed moment alone with David's adjacent headstone.

"All right?" John asked, quietly falling into place next to him.

"Long road," Lestrade offered in response.

John nodded; a wordless, intimate understanding.

Lestrade spent another few moments in silent contemplation before running a hand over his face with a rough sigh. "Mary's stone should be ready on the 20th," he spoke down to the temporary marker next to David's weather-worn headstone.

"I'll see you then," John said. Giving one last, crisp nod to Lestrade and the graves, he turned on his heel and left Lestrade to his waiting family.

Lestrade didn't really expect John to remember, especially with the hellish month that followed. It had been one brutal case after another, the most recent of which included John dislocating his previously injured shoulder while tackling Sherlock out of the way of a murder suspect keen on running him over with a stolen lorry.

Yet, as Lestrade stood in the cemetery on the afternoon of the 20th, admiring the symmetry of Mary's headstone next to David's, he turned at the sound of approaching footsteps to find John crossing the dry grass, left arm still in its sling and right hand holding a bunch of flowers.

"John, you didn't have to….." Lestrade gestured at John's arm.

"I said I'd be here," John said simply.

And that was that. Because John Watson was as much a man of his word as Greg Lestrade, the man who had spent the last twenty-five years fulfilling promises to dying loved ones.

"Sorry they're a bit…..poetic," John's face twisted apologetically on that last word as he handed the flowers over. "Sherlock's had me running all day; by the time I got to the shop, they were the only ones I could think of."

Lestrade took the flowers with a chuckle: forget-me-nots. Mary would approve of the joke within the symbolism. "She'd love them, really. Thank you."

John nodded, relieved, and took a step back, waiting in companionable, unobtrusive silence as Lestrade placed the flowers.

After a few more moments and a final, respectful nod, Lestrade was ready. He turned to John and looked him over, rolling his eyes. "Is Sherlock _really_ not letting you rest that shoulder?" he sighed.

"Actually, he got most of what he needed himself this time. Says once this experiment's done he'll be able to prove that Alan Landeau is the murderer. 'Course then he realized he forgot the most important bit and sent me off to find it. Easy enough to carry one-armed once I got it, but took more cab and Tube rides than I care to remember," John chucked good-naturedly. "Seriously, it was like looking for a bloody shrubbery."

Lestrade's breath caught in his chest, eyes blinking rapidly against the suddenly over-bright reflection of sunlight off Mary's polished stone.

John wasn't quite sure why he'd added that last bit; it was a rather obscure reference from a decades-old film an army mate had once shown him on layover in Kuwait. But Lestrade's sudden silence wasn't indicative of confusion, that much was obvious. No, John knew that look; had seen it countless times on the faces of patients, soldiers, and survivors, knew the feel of it on his own face all too well. So he kept silent and attentive, waiting for Lestrade to work through the memories, emotions, and shocked connections.

"Local police aren't going to be receiving reports of you shouting 'ni' at old ladies, are they?" Lestrade ventured.

John's eyes lit up as he grinned, "And risk Roger the Shrubber pissing right off if he heard me? Not a chance."

The two of them broke into the joyful laughter of newly discovered common ground.

Once they got their breaths back, Lestrade nodded toward the cemetery gates. "Fancy a pint?"

"Yeah, cheers," John agreed.

They spent the first hour at the pub discussing obscure comedy classics and work – safe subjects – before the conversation slowly moved into the more private waters of cemeteries, obituaries and remembrances; of hidden scrapbooks and respectfully marked dates.

Unlike the dozens of condolence cards in Lestrade's flat, John never said that he was sorry for Lestrade's loss, as if the words were redundant, the sentiment already known and understood. When the conversation finally hit the weary lull of exhausted exposure, John raised his glass and tipped it to Lestrade. But rather than the traditional "to Mary" toast Lestrade was expecting, John simply said, "tell me about her."

And Lestrade did.

He talked about David and Mary, of years of laughter, promises, and loss, of a family he both adored and felt honored to be part of.

John sat in honest, rapt attention for nearly an hour.

And never said a word.

For two quietly observant men of moral principle and few true friends, it was the start of a mutually lifelong loyalty.

Later that night, Lestrade stepped out of the shower to two texts: one from Sherlock – _Alan Landeau is your murderer. SH_ - followed by one from John that somehow managed to combine praising Sherlock, taking the piss out of him, and two Monty Python references all in one sentence. With a snort of laughter, Lestrade sank onto the edge of the bed and began to text them back. As his eyes passed over the old bedside photo, he suddenly found himself hoping that the Morgans' heaven _did _exist and that they really would all see each other again.

He had a feeling that John, David, and Mary would get on _fantastically_.


End file.
